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Egypt’s President Gives Himself New Powers Citing Deadlock, Egypt’s Leader Seizes New Power and Plans Mubarak Retrial
(about 4 hours later)
CAIRO — With a constitutional assembly on the brink of collapse and protesters battling the police in the streets here over the slow pace of change, President Mohamed Morsi issued a sweeping decree on Thursday night, granting himself broad new powers above any court and ordering the retrial of his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. CAIRO — With a constitutional assembly on the brink of collapse and protesters battling the police in the streets over the slow pace of change, President Mohamed Morsi issued a decree on Thursday granting himself broad powers above any court as the guardian of Egypt’s revolution, and used his new authority to order the retrial of Hosni Mubarak.
Mr. Morsi, an Islamist who won Egypt’s first free presidential vote, portrayed himself as acting to satisfy popular demands. But the unexpected breadth of his new powers immediately raised fears that he might become a new strongman. Mr. Morsi, an Islamist and Egypt’s first elected president, portrayed his decree as an attempt to fulfill popular demands for justice and protect the transition to a constitutional democracy. But the unexpected breadth of the powers he seized raised immediate fears that he might become a new strongman. Seldom in history has a postrevolutionary leader amassed so much personal power only to relinquish it swiftly.
“An absolute presidential tyranny,” Amr Hamzawy, a liberal member of the dissolved Parliament who had been a well-known political scientist at Western institutions, wrote in an online commentary. “Egypt is facing a horrifying coup against legitimacy and the rule of law and a complete assassination of the democratic transition.” “An absolute presidential tyranny,” Amr Hamzawy, a liberal member of the dissolved Parliament and prominent political scientist, wrote in an online commentary. “Egypt is facing a horrifying coup against legitimacy and the rule of law and a complete assassination of the democratic transition.”
Mr. Morsi made his move as he was basking in praise from the White House and other international accolades for his central role negotiating a cease-fire the previous night between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Mr. Morsi issued the decree at a high point in his five-month-old presidency, when he was basking in praise from the White House and around the world for his central role in negotiating a cease-fire that the previous night had stopped the fighting in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas.
His spokesman, Yasser Ali, stressed that Mr. Morsi’s power grab was “temporary,” until the ratification of a new constitution and election of a new Parliament. “Going around in a vicious circle in a transitional period has to end,” Mr. Ali said, apparently alluding to the political paralysis that stymied a first constitutional assembly and now threatens to defeat a second one. The process, he said, “has to be concluded to serve the best interest of the homeland.” But his political opponents immediately called for demonstrations on Friday to protest his new powers. “Passing a revolutionary demand within a package of autocratic decisions is a setback for the revolution,” Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a more liberal former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a former presidential candidate, wrote online. And the chief of the Supreme Constitutional Court indicated that it did not accept the decree.
He called the Morsi decree “a revolutionary declaration in every meaning of the word.” Mr. Morsi’s advisers portrayed the decree as an attempt to cut through the deadlock that has stalled Egypt’s convoluted political transition more than 20 months after President Mubarak’s ouster. Mr. Morsi’s more political opponents and the holdover judicial system, they argued, were sabotaging the transition to thwart the Islamist majority.
Mr. Morsi’s move came just days after about a quarter of the constitutional assembly — most of its non-Islamist members, including representatives of Egypt’s Coptic Church — walked out in protest against an Islamist rush to complete the charter before a panel of holdover Mubarak-era judges could use a looming deadline or other arguments to dissolve the assembly. He pushed back by two months the panel’s deadline to finish the charter, The liberal and secular opposition has repeatedly threatened to boycott the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly. (It is led by Mr. Morsi’s allies in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. Members were picked by Parliament, where Islamists won a nearly three-quarters majority.) And as the assembly nears a deadline set under an earlier interim transition plan, most secular members and the representatives of the Coptic Church have walked out, costing it up to a quarter of its 100 members and much of its legitimacy.
Mr. Morsi already governs without the check of a Parliament. Egypt’s constitutional court ordered the dissolution of the Islamist-dominated Parliament on the eve of his election, citing technical rules about the voting system used. And in August Mr. Morsi successfully ordered the council of generals who had assumed Parliament’s lawmaking powers to cede them and return to their barracks, although many people assume that the possibility the generals could return allows them to continue to wield influence. Meanwhile, the Supreme Constitutional Court — which Mr. Mubarak had tried to stack with loyalists and where a few judges openly fear Islamists — is poised to issue a decision that could dissolve the current assembly and require a new one. The same court already dissolved an earlier assembly and, on the eve of Mr. Morsi’s election in June, also dissolved Parliament, in each case citing technical issues of eligibility.
Nathan Brown, a scholar of the Egyptian legal system at the Carnegie Institute in Beirut, said Mr. Morsi might relinquish his autocratic new powers in just a few months with the ratification of a new constitution. But if he does, he will have defied historical precedent. After the dissolution of Parliament, leaders of the council of generals who had ruled since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster seized all legislative power and control of the budget, reducing Mr. Morsi to a figurehead and spurring talk of a coup.
Mr. Brown summarized Mr. Morsi’s overall message: “I, Morsi, am all powerful. And in my first act as being all powerful, I declare myself more powerful still. But don’t worry — it’s just for a little while.” But in August, Mr. Morsi won the backing of many other generals and officers for a decree that returned the army to its barracks and left him in sole control of the government, with both executive and legislative authority.
Thursday’s decree frees Mr. Morsi, his decrees and the constitutional assembly from judicial oversight as well.
In a television interview, Mr. Morsi’s spokesman, Yasser Ali, stressed that the expanded powers would last only until the ratification of a new constitution in a few months, calling the decree “an attempt to end the transitional period as soon as possible.”
“Going around in a vicious circle in a transitional period has to end,” he said, apparently referring to the deadlocked constitutional assembly. The process “has to be concluded to serve the best interests of the homeland.”
In some respects, Mr. Morsi’s decree fulfills opposition demands. Secular representatives in the constitutional assembly had walked out in part over their accusation that the Islamists were unfairly rushing the work. But the decree pushes the deadline back two months from the end of the year.
Mr. Morsi also replaced the public prosecutor, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, a Mubarak appointee widely criticized for failing to win stronger sentences against Mr. Mubarak and his associates and against abusive police officers. (Mr. Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison for overseeing the killing of protesters, but the verdict found no direct evidence of his involvement, thus paving the way for an appeal.)
Mr. Mahmoud had refused Mr. Morsi’s effort to remove him by naming him ambassador to the Vatican. His replacement is Talaat Ibrahim Abdullah, former leader of the movement for judicial independence under Mr. Mubarak.
Mr. Morsi ordered retrials for Mr. Mubarak and others accused of responsibility for killing civilian protesters during the uprising. He stripped the accused of protections against being tried twice for the same crime and issued a law setting up a new transitional legal system to handle the retrials.
Another decree provision granted the president the “power to take all necessary measures and procedures” against any potential threat to the revolution.
On the Web site of the state newspaper Al Ahram, a prominent jurist, Salah Eissa, urged citizens “to take to the street and die, because Egypt is lost,” adding, “immunizing the decisions of the president with a constitutional declaration is a forgery and a fraud.”
Nathan J. Brown, a scholar of the Egyptian legal system at George Washington University, summed up the overall message: “I, Morsi, am all powerful. And in my first act as being all powerful, I declare myself more powerful still. But don’t worry — it’s just for a little while.”